Today, I went to see my shrink and she had a thing or two to say that hadn’t ocurred to me. I shed a few tears while telling her about Rose. Actually, once the dam had broken, I cried a lot. I told her about how the three blocks between the place where Rose and Alex lived in 2001 and the bar/theatre where she worked (Boom Chicago on Leidseplein) were my epicentre of this very important year of my life.
What my shrink pointed out was that as I am preparing to move away and Rose is buried in Australia, I am about to lose the focal point of my grief, Amsterdam.
There is no gravestone, no memorial for her here, only in my mind, that street with the small canal is a monument to a short but intense friendship.
I once laid flowers on the bridge in front of her house (see picture) with a small note attached. I think I will do that again this year on Queens Day (30-04), as it is the 5-year-anniversary of her death.
On the picture, you can see us on Queens Day 2001, waving from the bridge to the apartment window where Alex was taking our picture. At that point, we had been already up all night dancing madly in the Korsakoff, drinking Absolute Vodka/cranberry and cycled to Amsterdam North and back to see a big flea market. The DJ (with tarpolin) in the foreground had started blasting his decks early in the morning, so any chance of catching any shut-eye was completely out of the question, anyway.